Joyce Carol Oates is an O. Henry and National Book Award-winning novelist, dramatist, essayist, memoirist, and poet, as well as a longtime professor of creative writing at Princeton. In other words, she’s not someone you expect to see put her foot in her mouth.

Earlier this afternoon, the celebrated author was pondering the unfolding crisis in Egypt (amid asides about the George Zimmerman trial, Heidegger, Spinoza, and Kant) before finally framing a provocative, if not downright repugnant, query:

Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic--Egypt--natural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?

Drawing a straight causal line from Islam to communally sanctioned sexual assault is a favorite pastime of the anti-Muslim hate groups that pepper social media, including the insidious Ban Islam Facebook page. The accusation goes hand-in-hand with stereotypes of Muslims as savage or subhuman.

The tweet set off a firestorm of replies, many from other respected authors. Teju Cole was rather blunt:

Many users expressed their disappointment in Oates, pointing out the prevalence of rape and sexual abuse in majority-Christian states and institutions, and informed her that a patriarchal power structure’s use of religion as a weapon or means of control does not indict the faith itself.